Johnnie Walker Royal Route launches

Diageo GTME has completed its Johnnie Walker Explorers’ Club Collection with today’s travel-retail launch of The Royal Route.

The Royal Route, which is priced at $159, follows the Johnnie Walker Explorers’ Club Collection expressions The Spice Road and The Gold Route.

The marketing concept behind Diageo’s latest expression of Johnnie Walker is inspired by the royal trading route, which brought luxury goods from the Far East to Kings in the Mediterranean, according to Diageo.

The UK headquartered drinks group said it was “the precious silks, Persian ornaments, diamonds and pearls” traded along the Royal Route that inspired master blender Jim Beveridge to create “the most opulent variant in the series”.

No information about the whisky’s malt and grain content or age has been released.

Instead Diageo said the liquid is sourced from “the finest hand selected oak casks from the most exclusive reserve cellars of Johnnie Walker.”

Steve White, marketing director of Diageo Global Travel and Middle East, described The Royal Route as “the pinnacle and culmination” of a series that will “provide an exclusive travel retail collection of whiskies with three distinct profiles and price points which will appeal to both customers and consumers.”

Beveridge said: “On the nose there is a vast array of rich fruity flavours including apple, pear, fig and peach. Reflective of the beauty, rarity and exotic nature of the luxury goods that were exchanged on the Royal Trade Route, it has an intense and complex flavour with notes of dried fruit and toffee, handsomely balanced with a subtle woody sweetness and a lingering wispy aromatic smoke. The Royal Route delivers far more depth of character, with richer, multiple layers on the palate.”